Economia Política Internacional: entendendo a engrenagem produtivo-financeiro-monetária do Padrão-Ouro e suas heranças

Abstract

This text intends to facilitate the understanding of the functioning of the financial system in the history of the capitalist economy. Carrying out a pedagogical exercise of simplification of the subject, it establishes bases to incur more complex readings. To do so, we analyze the construction of the monetary and political consensus that gave stability to the world economy, the Gold Standard (19th century-1914), which anchored England's economic and political power through the Pound Sterling. The context explains the reasons that led the author to dedicate time writing about the subject; section 1 contextualizes the historical moment in which the gold standard was in force; section 2 explains the contribution of money banknotes in the context of industrial England; section 3 details concepts such as convertibility and monetary parity, deepening the reflection on the economic and political function of these aspects, pedagogically exposing important concepts for understanding current affairs such as the basic interest rate and the role it can play in the economic dynamics of a country, in industrial cycles and class struggle as well; section 4 exposes the reasons for the abandonment of the gold standard on a world scale, giving indications of the conjuncture that would lead the USA to assume, decades later, the leadership of the international monetary system, with the dollar occupying the place that had belonged to the pound sterling. The article is an introduction to subsequent writings that will, chronologically, reach contemporaneity concerning international trade, the international division of labor, international relations, monetary and financial arrangements and their consequences in the world of production and consumption of goods.